[ Thanks to Thomas
Chung for this link. ]
“Last year, when the Walt Disney Co.’s feature animation unit,
in Burbank, Calif., announced that it was using Linux for digital
animation work, speculation grew that Adobe Systems Inc. would
finally port its products to Linux. To this day, however, Adobe has
done no such thing. Rather than wait, Disney, along with two other
motion picture animation studios (which declined to be named for
this article), decided to jointly fund the development of a
Windows-to-Linux porting solution. The idea: develop technology
using the Wine emulator to run Adobe Photoshop on Linux.“While animation studios compete fiercely for ticket sales and
are not known as team players, all three agreed that a project that
would benefit the entire open-source community–while delivering a
technology they needed—was worth their cooperation,
said Jack Brooks, director of technology at Walt Disney Feature
Animation.“The project has paid off tremendously for Disney this year
alone. Development of the porting solution, including site
licenses, cost Disney less than $15,000. Had he opted to run
Photoshop on Windows machines, it would have cost upward of $50,000
just in annual licensing fees, said Brooks. He estimates support
would have been an additional $40,000 a year…”